September's Book

A House Full of Females 
by Laurel Ulrich

September 21st (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Emily P.'s


Note from Emily P.
the library only has five copies and there is currently 10 holds so people may want to read early


Summary from Deseret Book
A stunning and sure-to-be controversial book that pieces together, through more than two dozen nineteenth-century diaries, letters, albums, minute-books, and quilts left by first-generation Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, the never-before-told story of the earliest days of the women of Mormon “plural marriage,” whose right to vote in the state of Utah was given to them by a Mormon-dominated legislature as an outgrowth of polygamy in 1870, fifty years ahead of the vote nationally ratified by Congress, and who became political actors in spite of, or because of, their marital arrangements. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, writing of this small group of Mormon women who’ve previously been seen as mere names and dates, has brilliantly reconstructed these textured, complex lives to give us a fulsome portrait of who these women were and of their “sex radicalism”–the idea that a woman should choose when and with whom to bear children.


Click here to find it at the public library
Click here to find it on Amazon
Click here to find it at Barnes and Noble
Click here to find it at Deseret Book

March's Book

Cold Cereal
by Adam Rex

March 30th (5th Thurs)
7:30pm at Kristin P.'s


Summary from PCPL website:

Baker and Taylor
A boy who may be part changeling, twins involved in a bizarre secret experiment, and a clurichaun in a red tracksuit try to save the world from an evil cereal company whose ultimate goal is world domination.

HARPERCOLL
From author Adam Rex comes the first book in the Cold Cereal Saga—a hilarious, clever, and action-packed adventure series with an educational hook.

Scottish Play Doe—aka Scott—is used to being a little different. Sometimes he hallucinates things no one else can see. But then one of these hallucinations tries to steal Scott's backpack, and he comes face-to-face with an honest-to-goodness leprechaun named Mick who's on the run from, of all things, the Goodco Cereal Company. With the help of his friends Erno and Emily, Scott and Mick uncover Goodco's sinister plans—and take the first steps in saving the world from the evil cereal company. 

Like the Artemis Fowl Series and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series, the Cold Cereal Saga takes elements of familiar mythology—in this case, Arthurian legend and Irish folklore—and reimagines it in the modern world with a cast of relatable characters and myriad magical beings. The story is told from multiple points of view, and there are dozens of illustrations—including "commercial breaks"—and stories within the story.

 Supports the Common Core State Standards


Click here to find it at the public library 

 Click here to find it on Amazon 

 Click here to find it at Barnes and Noble

August's Book

The Broken Covenant
by Caroll Hofeling Morris

Aug. 20th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Janeen's 

Summary:
Publication Date: January 1, 1989 in The Broken Covenant, author Carroll Hofeling Morris tells a gripping story of sin and its aftermath, as one woman faces the possibility of estrangement from the church and the disintegration of her family until she learns to accept responsibility for her actions.

summary from amazon.com

Click here to find the book on amazon.

Click here to visit the author's website.

January's Book

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
by E.L. Konigsburg

January 15th (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Janice's

Summary:

Bored with her life, twelve-year-old Claudia Kincaid is ready for a big change. In fact, she wants to run away from home. But she doesn't like discomfort. She doesn't even like picnics. So an old-fashioned, knapsack kind of running away is out of the question. Instead of running from somewhere, she decides to run to somewhere — some place comfortable, and preferably beautiful. Where else, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City? Fare on the train from the suburbs takes three weeks of skipping hot fudge sundaes. Taking Jamie, the second youngest of her three brothers — the quiet one with the largest cache of money — with her, Claudia's life is immediately changed in a big way. Nights she and Jamie take baths in one of the museum's fountains and they sleep in royal beds in the museum's collection, despite the "Please do not step on the platform" sign. Every day they check out by 4:30 and reenter the museum around the back at 5:30. To remain inconspicuous, Claudia and Jamie join school-group tours by day, and when the museum closes, stand on the toilets in the bathroom stalls out of view from the guards checking for strays.

But she and Jamie's vacation from their "real" life turns into an adventure when Angel, a sculpture rumored to have been carved by Michelangelo, arrives. Will they solve a mystery that even the experts can't solve?

Author Konigsburg's tale of a young girl's escape into a search for identity — her own and Angel's — in one of the world's greatest museums was awarded a 1967 Newbery Medal, as well as named an American Library Association Notable Book, and "Best of the Best" by the School Library Journal. Illustrated by Konigsburg's own expressionistic line drawings, the book remains a modern classic.

Summary from www.scholastic.com

Discussion questions from www.scholastic.com

Click here to here to visit the library website

November's Book

The Willoughbys
by Lois Lowry

Nov. 20th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Stacy's

Summary:
Abandoned by their ill-humored parents to the care of an odious nanny, Tim, the twins, Barnaby A and Barnaby B, and their sister, Jane, attempt to fulfill their roles as good oldfashioned children. Following the models set in lauded tales from A Christmas Carol to Mary Poppins, the four Willoughbys hope to attain their proscribed happy ending too, or at least a satisfyingly maudlin one. However, it is an unquestionably ruthless act that sets in motion the transformations that lead to their salvation and to happy endings for not only the four children, but their nanny, an abandoned baby, a candy magnate, and his long-lost son too. Replete with a tongue-in-cheek glossary and bibliography, this hilarious and decidedly old-fashioned parody pays playful homage to classic works of children’s literature.

summary from goodreads.com

Click here to view discussion questions from SweetOnBooks.com

Click here to visit the library website

October's Book

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
by Helen Simonson

Oct. 16th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Lieschen's 

Please contact Lieschen to pick up a library copy of the book.  Because the books were checked out as a caboodle kit from the library, ALL the books need to be returned to Lieschen at book club or shortly thereafter.  Thank you!

Summary:

You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson's wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major Pettigrew is one of the most indelible characters in contemporary fiction, and from the very first page of this remarkable novel he will steal your heart.

The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But then his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more.

But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition? (From the publisher.)

Summary from LitLovers.com

Click here to view discussion questions from LitLovers.com

August's Book

My Name is Asher Lev
by Chaim Potok

August 28th (4th Thurs.) - NEW DATE
8pm at Sarah L.'s

Summary:

Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels even when it leads him to blasphemy. In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other subject only to the imagination.

Asher Lev grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a world suffused by ritual and revolving around a charismatic Rebbe. But in time his gift threatens to estrange him from that world and the parents he adores. As it follows his struggle, My Name Is Asher Lev becomes a luminous portrait of the artist, by turns heartbreaking and exultant, a modern classic.

summary from www.goodreads.com 

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Click here to view discussion questions from www.sparknotes.com

May's Book

The Promise of Stardust
by Priscille Sibley

May 15th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Amber C.'s

Summary:

Matt Beaulieu was two years old the first time he held Elle McClure in his arms, seventeen when he first kissed her under a sky filled with shooting stars, and thirty-three when they wed. Now in their late thirties, the deeply devoted couple has everything—except the baby they've always wanted.

When a tragic accident leaves Elle brain-dead, Matt is devastated. Though he cannot bear losing her, he knows his wife, a thoughtful and adventurous scientist, feared only one thing—a slow death. Just before Matt agrees to remove Elle from life support, the doctors discover that she is pregnant. Now what was once a clear-cut decision becomes an impossible choice. Matt knows how much this child would have meant to Elle. While there is no certainty her body can sustain the pregnancy, he is sure Elle would want the baby to have a chance. Linney, Matt's mother, believes her son is blind with denial. She loves Elle, too, and insists that Elle would never want to be kept alive by artificial means, no matter what the situation.

Divided by the love they share, driven by principle, Matt and Linney fight for what each believes is right, and the result is a disagreement that escalates into a controversial legal battle, ultimately going beyond one family and one single life.

Told with sensitivity and compassion, The Promise of Stardust is an emotionally resonant and thought-provoking tale that raises profound questions about life and death, faith and medicine—and illuminates, with beauty and grace, the power of love to wound...and to heal. (From the publisher.)

summary from www.litlovers.com 

Click here to visit the library website and reserve your copy.

Click here to view discussion questions from www.litlovers.com

February's Book

The Secret Garden
by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Feb. 20th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Aimeè's

Summary:

Mary Lennox has no one left in the world when she arrives at Misselthwaite Manor, her mysterious uncle's enormous, drafty mansion looming on the edge of the moors. A cholera epidemic has ravaged the Indian village in which she was born, killing both her parents and the "Ayah," or Indian servant, who cared for her.

Not that being alone is new to her. Her socialite mother had no time between parties for Mary, and her father was both too ill and too occupied by his work to raise his daughter. Not long after coming to live with her uncle, Mr. Craven, Mary discovers a walled garden, neglected and in ruins.

Soon she meets her servant Martha's brother Dickon, a robust country boy nourished both by his mother's love and by the natural surroundings of the countryside; and her tyrannical cousin Colin, whose mother died giving birth to him. So traumatized was Mr. Craven by the sudden death of his beloved wife that he effectively abandoned the infant Colin and buried the keys to the garden that she adored. His son has grown into a self-loathing hypochondriacal child whose tantrums strike fear into the hearts of servants.

The lush garden is now overgrown and all are forbidden to enter it. No one can even remember where the door is, until a robin leads Mary to its hidden key. It is in the "secret garden," and with the help of Dickon, that Mary and Colin find the path to physical and spiritual health. Along the way the three children discover that in their imaginations—called "magic" by Colin—is the power to transform lives. (From the Penguin edition—image, top-right.)

summary from www.litlovers.com 

Click here to visit the library website and reserve your copy.

Click here to view discussion questions from www.litlovers.com

July's Book

The Light Between Oceans
by M. L. Stedman

July 25th  (4th Thurs)
8pm at Judy's

Summary:
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

The Light Between Oceans is exquisite and unforgettable, a deeply moving novel.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here to visit the library website and reserve your copy.

April's Book

Divergent
by Veronica Roth

April 18th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Erin's home

Summary:
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are--and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here to go to the library website 
and reserve your book today

March's Book

Half-Broke Horses:
a true-life novel
by Jeannette Wells

March 15th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Judy's home

Summary:
Lily Casey Smith, this novel's feisty Texas protagonist, is a frontier teacher, a rancher, a rodeo rider, a poker player, and bootlegger. In Half Broke Horses, she survives droughts, tornados, floods, poverty, and whatever else fate can throw against her. Based on author Jeannette Walls's grandmother, Lily is a plausible character because she has a voice that synchronizes with her history. This novel lives up to the still gathering acclaim for Walls's novel The Glass Castle.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here or
the picture to go to the library web site

February's Book

To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee

Feb. 21st (3rd Wed.)
8pm at Janeen's home

Summary:
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here or
the picture to go to the library web site

June's Book

For One More Day
by Mitch Albom

June 10th
8pm at Amy W.'s

The library has several copies available, click on the book cover to go directly to the library's web site. The book is also available on Amazon for cheap.

Review from Publishers Weekly:
In this second novel from Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven author Albom, grief-stricken Charles "Chick" Benetto goes into an alcoholic tailspin when his always-attentive mother, Pauline, dies. Framed as an "as told to" story, Chick quickly narrates her funeral; his drink-fueled loss of savings, job ("sales") and family; and his descent into loneliness and isolation. After a suicide attempt, Chick encounters Pauline's ghost. Together, the two revisit Pauline's travails raising her children alone after his father abandons them: she braves the town's disapproval of her divorce and works at a beauty parlor, taking an extra job to put money aside for the children's education. Pauline cringes at the heartache Chick inflicted as a demanding child, obnoxious teen and brusque, oblivious adult chasing the will-o'-the-wisp of a baseball career. Through their story, Albom foregrounds family sanctity, maternal self-sacrifice and the destructive power of personal ambition and male self-involvement. He wields pathos as if it were a Louisville Slugger—shoveling dirt into Pauline's grave, Chick hears her spirit cry out, " 'Oh, Charley. How could you?' "—but Albom often strikes a nerve on his way to the heart.
(http://www.amazon.com/One-More-Day-Mitch-Albom/dp/1401309577/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242941776&sr=8-1)

April's Book

A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini

April 8th (Wednesday)

8pm at Kristi's

The library has several copies (click on the picture of the book cover to go directly to the library web site). It's also available on amazon.com for about a dollar plus shipping.

Summary:

Two women born a generation apart witness the destruction of their home and family in wartorn Kabul, incurring losses over the course of thirty years that test the limits of their strength and courage.